Today in History: In 1972, Hurricane Agnes, blamed for at least 122 deaths, made landfall over the Florida Panhandle

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Today is Thursday, June 19, the 170th day of 2014. There are 195 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the U.S. Senate, 73-27, after surviving a lengthy filibuster. Hours later, a twin-engine plane carrying Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Birch Bayh, D-Ind., crashed near Springfield, Massachusetts. Kennedy was seriously injured, Bayh and his wife, Marvella, less so, but two people, including the pilot, were killed.

On this date:

In 1764, Jose Gervasio Artigas, considered the father of Uruguayan independence, was born in Montevideo.

In 1864, during the Civil War, the Confederate sloop-of-war CSS Alabama was sunk by the USS Kearsarge (also a sloop-of-war) off Cherbourg, France.

In 1865, Union troops commanded by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, with news that the Civil War was over, and that all remaining slaves in Texas were free, an event celebrated to this day as “Juneteenth.”

In 1910, the first-ever Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane, Wash. (The idea for the observance is credited to Sonora Louise Smart Dodd.)

In 1934, the Federal Communications Commission was created; it replaced the Federal Radio Commission.

In 1938, four dozen people were killed when a railroad bridge in Montana collapsed, sending a train known as the Olympian hurtling into Custer Creek.

In 1944, during World War II, the two-day Battle of the Philippine Sea began, resulting in a decisive victory for the Americans over the Japanese.

In 1953, Julius Rosenberg, 35, and his wife, Ethel, 37, convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, were executed at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York.

In 1964, a groundbreaking ceremony took place in Concord, California, for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, with President Lyndon B. Johnson presiding.

In 1972, Hurricane Agnes, blamed for at least 122 deaths, made landfall over the Florida Panhandle.

In 1986, University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias, the first draft pick of the Boston Celtics, suffered a fatal cocaine-induced seizure. Artificial heart recipient Murray P. Haydon died in Louisville, Kentucky, after 16 months on the manmade pump.

In 1999, author Stephen King was seriously injured when he was struck by a van driven by Bryan Smith in North Lovell, Maine. Britain’s Prince Edward married commoner Sophie Rhys-Jones (rees johnz) in Windsor, England.

Ten years ago: The U.S. military stepped up its campaign against militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (AH’-boo MOO’-sahb ahl-zahr-KOW’-ee), launching an airstrike that pulverized a suspected hideout in Fallujah. President George W. Bush told Americans in his weekly radio address that the economy was growing stronger and more jobs were being created despite Democrats’ claim he’d presided over a downturn for the country.

Five years ago: New York Times reporter David S. Rohde (rohd) and Afghan reporter Tahir Ludin escaped from militant captors after more than seven months in captivity in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford was indicted and jailed on charges his international banking empire was really just a Ponzi scheme built on lies, bluster and bribery. (Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison after being convicted of bilking investors in a $7.2 billion scheme that involved the sale of fraudulent certificates of deposits.)

One year ago: Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspended talks with the United States on a new security deal to protest the way his government was left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban. President Barack Obama, speaking in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, pledged to cut deployed U.S. nuclear weapons by one-third if Cold War foe Russia did the same. Actor James Gandolfini, 51, died while vacationing in Rome. Country singer Slim Whitman, 90, died in Orange Park, Florida.